Sports

I know, it's not really appropriate for a true computer scientist, but nevertheless, I really enjoy doing sports. In the summer time, I usually play Soccer and Basketball with my colleagues in Garching, and during winter, I like to go skiing. Apart from that, whenever time permits, I also do climbing, running, and swimming.

The image on the right shows some of the players of our team "Knoll United", all sweaty but quite happy, after an exhausting soccer match.

Travelling

Assuming there is enough time and money, I like to travel as often as posible. I am interested in city trips in close vicinity as well as bigger voyages to more exotic places. The highlight of my travel experiences so far is a 4 week trip to India on occasion of the wedding of an indian friend of mine. There is a gallery here where you can find some of my travel pictures and other stuff as well.

Japanese

In the Winter Semester 08/09, I started learning Japanese. I had been thinking about that for a long time, simply because I find the Japanese culture fascinating. During my semester abroad, one of my best friends was from Japan, and he was telling me a lot of things about his country. This is how it all started. Years later, I was looking for some diversion from the usual boring computer science stuff, so I finally decided to start learning Japanese.

Music

First of all, I really enjoy listening to music. If you want to see what kind of music I'm into, you can check out my last.fm profile.

Only listening to music, however, is sometimes not enough for me, and then what happens is that I pick up my guitar and play a bit. I started playing guitar in 1998, first on my father's guitar, and later on a TexMex Fender Stratocaster which I bought. Just recently, I also got a new half-acoustic western guitar, a Washburn D10SCE-BK, with which I now annoy my neighbours.

Some songs I like to play include: